“Well, they are quite sensible to refuse,” Temeraire said, “for I have never met any people so unfriendly as this, anywhere, at least not when I had not given them cause to be unfriendly. But Tharkay,” he said, misery seizing him fresh, as he recalled his circumstances, “I cannot take you to Laurence—I must go on. I must get to China—”

“I beg your pardon for interrupting you,” Tharkay said. “But I think you will find you are mistaken: you must get to France. They stopped in Istanbul with your egg, two days ago. There may yet be a chance to intercept them, I believe, in the Alps.”

“WELL, LAURENCE, YOU HAVE a gift for establishing yourself in the more benighted places of the world,” Tharkay said, his voice rasping with the cold even after they had warmed their hands and throats with a cup of tea. Laurence could hardly quarrel with the remark: they were huddling upon a ledge inside an icy crevasse which plunged away beneath them in rings of blue shading to midnight-dark, even though above their heads the clouds wheeled across a wide and sunny sky.

They were at least not in present danger of a fall to their deaths: Temeraire, crouching, filled the pit beneath them very much like a cork sitting in the neck of a bottle, looking entirely as uncomfortable as this description might suggest despite a thick matting of dried leaves and straw which protected his hide from the walls. But he was very nearly invisible against the dark; two French patrols had flown directly overhead in broad daylight to-day, quite clearly visible from their hiding-hole, but Temeraire had not been spotted even by the sharp eyes of the Pou-de-Ciel dragons.

“I will admit this is an unsurpassed bolt-hole,” Tharkay added. “I imagine I could walk past the opening a dozen times without the least suspicion, even if I had the certain knowledge you were within a hundred yards of me.”

“I cannot think it so splendid as all that,” Temeraire put in, a little plaintively. “It is very strange to feel that there is nothing beneath me: I feel as though I am flying, but I am not; and these walls are quite cold. But pray let us look at the maps again, and see if you can tell a little better, which way they are likely to come?”

These Laurence had just finished tacking to the walls of the crevasse with small nails, and they were more the work of his hands than their original surveyors’ by now, with a great many alterations drawn atop the long line of the Alps, and dozens of passes marked for being shut by snow and ice. The ferals had made a great many snickering comments about the quality of the maps when he had first displayed them for their consideration; dragons made considerably better surveyors than men.

The French company might fly over a closed pass, but he thought it unlikely. Great inconvenience would attend such a choice: the dragons required places to rest the night, safe from avalanche and rockfall, and their passengers would have little comfort trying to make camp. Even French couriers going with all speed back and forth to Italy avoided the closed passes, and the company from Istanbul would have no reason to suspect they needed to brave so inhospitable a route: these were the walls around the very heart of France, and Napoleon did not yet suppose his citadel likely to be stormed.

“You do not suppose they will try that crossing Bistorta told us of, where her friend was nearly buried?” Temeraire shuddered. “Oh! If they should let the egg be smashed, or frozen—”

“You may rely they will do no such thing, having brought it so far, so carefully,” Laurence said. Even if Lien would have preferred to see Temeraire and Iskierka’s egg destroyed, Napoleon plainly did not mean to discard so priceless a cross-breed, nor hesitate to use it to his best advantage: whether to bring Celestial and Kazilik blood into his own lines, or perhaps even to compel Temeraire and Iskierka to surrender to him, removing them from the field of battle. The egg might remain unhatched and vulnerable for another year, perhaps even as much as two.

“They have alternatives enough, without risking any of the worse passes,” Laurence finished. “Our best chance must be to ask our friends to disperse themselves widely through the passes, and bring us news of any unusual party of dragons seen coming into the mountains. Was there a heavy-weight among them?” he asked Tharkay, who nodded.

“A Fleur-de-Nuit, I am sorry to say.” It was indeed unwelcome news: the party might well travel by night with such a guide, and if caught at such a time would have all the advantage of the night-flying breed’s better vision.

“Only find them for me,” Temeraire said, with unwonted savagery, “and I will answer for any number of dragons, if they even have the gall to try and defend egg-stealing to my face: I wonder they should not be heartily ashamed of themselves.”

That evening, the Alpine dragons promptly scattered on this mission—they were none loath to accommodate the request, Temeraire having brought two substantial chests packed brim-full of gold plate and handsome jewels—and after devouring the goat which they had brought him, Temeraire fell into a fitful drowse, his head curled awkwardly atop his body, which rose and settled uneasy in the bottle-neck of the chasm with every breath.

The ferals had also brought another load of hay, likely pilfered from some highly perplexed farmer more used to dragons stealing his sheep than their feed. With this, Laurence and Tharkay repaired the gaps which had opened in Temeraire’s protective waistcoat; an operation which, requiring them to clamber precariously around the ice-walls secured only with a pickax while they thrust handfuls of straw down Temeraire’s sides, left Laurence shaking and weary when it was done. He climbed only slowly back up to the ledge that was their shelter; Tharkay was adding the rest of the straw into the matting that was their own protection from the ice.

“This is a peculiar sort of place for convalescence, Laurence,” Tharkay observed as they huddled back beneath their makeshift heap of oilskins and furs, gnawing the dried meat which was all the supper they could have: fire could not be risked in the night, where the glow would illuminate all the crevasse for any Fleur-de-Nuit within fifty miles to see. “I cannot recall when I have seen either of you look more ragged.”

“There is nothing to be done for it,” Laurence said shortly. He was almost too cold to speak. The bullet-wound pained him deeply—an ache which drew all the chill of the ice into his body, and barred sleep. He dug out his brandy-flask, and swallowing handed it on to Tharkay. “I am sorry if your work in Istanbul was interrupted.”